The Question of Termination In Modern Psychoanalysis*

There is no reference to the topic of termination in the growing body of literature with a modern psychoanalytic perspective. Since the founding of the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies in 1971, not one lecture, seminar, workshop, or course of study has had this subject as its focus. Nor to the best of my knowledge, have other institutes, identified with or closely related to the theoretical and therapeutic aims which can be subsumed under the category of Modern Freudian analysis, concerned themselves with this complex issue.

Yet the subject is an exceedingly multifaceted one. For when we speak of termination of analysis whom do we have in mind? Are we referring only to adults who may be classified as suffering from psychoneurotic conflicts, those readily amenable to classical analysis and interpretation? Such patients have become an almost extinct species as our knowledge, theoretical and clinical, compels us to recognize that whether it be our changing cultural values, child-rearing practices, or potential world-destruction threats, our practices now include children, adolescents, couples, families, and group members. Another separate category includes analysts and candidates of analytic institutes; it is time for us to discard the myth of their intrinsicallly superior mental health. The diagnostic categories we deal with range from the most seriously emotionally disturbed, including the schizophrenias and the narcissistic preoedipal